Month: April 2017

As part of the lead-up to our reading, here’s a poem by one of the eight poets who’s reading on Saturday 29th April (see below for more details): Lizzie Harris, whose debut collection, Stop Wanting (CSU Poetry Center, 2014), was selected by Tracy K. Smith and named one of Cosmo’s “10 Books by Women You Have to Read This Spring.” Her poems appear in All Hollow, Barrow Street, The Carolina Quarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly, Phantom Limb, Sixth Finch and VICE.com. She was born in southern Arizona, raised in Pennsylvania and currently resides in Brooklyn, where she’s a poetry editor for Bodega Magazine. “White Loss of Forgetting” was originally published by Brooklyn Poets.

White Loss of Forgetting
I remember the touching
was softer than I wanted
and after I wanted things quiet
because I didn’t trust the skin
that skinned my little body I don’t want to be vague

he had my body run the water
he took my body for a carpet
he took my body from men
I would one day want to love me
I don’t want to be vague

My mother took my body to the doctor
she said I was infected
from sitting in the bathtub
but it makes a kind of after-sense
because I was tired
of that shower reassembling my body
in steam I had never before
seen my father in water
so perhaps
he mistook me for a spout
with a head that clicks to expose
infinite pressure I don’t want to be vague

awful things happened
the worst sinks beneath
my eye until I can only see
my crown I only see

my father coaxing
at the spout but my body is small
and then it all gets

lower and then I swear
he pulls a red thread
from my middle and I’m so low now
I see myself from the nosebleeds
see sky like a bed to hide beneath
please
believe me

When Lizzie read with The Eagle and the Wren in September 2014, we introduced her thus: Don’t be fooled by Lizzie’s self-deprecation. She’s an amazing poet whose work exposes the roots of longing and fear, the support that family members can give each other while nonetheless being divided by what remains unsaid or unrecognized, of needs that remain unfulfilled. In one of the many poems that share the title of her collection, the speaker notes, “I don’t want to forgive,/it’s become a sort of closeness.” Lizzie’s work breaks down dichotomies—evil and goodness, truth and fiction, love and loss—and revels in the reality that is left over, one that is equal parts sweetness and dark despair, indistinguishable from each other. Despite the admonition of her book’s title, the poems collected speak of the continued need to hunger for a future of kindness and love.

We’re proud that she can join us next Saturday (29th April at 7 p.m.) at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. If you missed my post about my motivations for organising the reading, you can read it here. The post has all the information you will need to donate to RAINN (or, go to the top of this post and click the link), and directions if you would like to come to the reading, which is at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop on Saturday, 29th April at 7 p.m. We hope to see you there.

As part of the lead-up to our reading, here’s a poem by one of the eight poets who’s reading next Saturday (see below for more details): Camonghne Felix, who’s also a political speechwriter and an essayist. She is the author of the chapbook Yolk, published via Penmanship Books in March 2015 and in May of that year was listed by Black Youth Project as a “Black Girl From the Future You Should Know.”

Camonghne Felix

Here is her poem “The Therapist Asks 3”, which was originally published by Poetry:

The Therapist Asks 3

“But there were times when you offered your consent with older men. You chose them, & you were not afraid. Why not?”

You don’t know the true success of survival till you’ve experienced the adrenaline of a too-close death. What is there to fear when you’ve licked the edge? It is going to be an oppressively hot summer, the New York Post says, but I’ve got a few of my own stowed away, enough to occupy a foreign desert.

There was one summer, his name was Tito and my sisters still say his name just like that, “Tee-toww,” the O a benchmark in the bottom of the jaw. I was just 12 but the gaze itself made me a flame, so no one could tell, I guess,

or no one would tell. He was the kind of heavy swelter that had the whole block at mercy, everyone’s connect to whatever they needed, which was much and in bulk. Power is a switch that yokes me up at the waist — I was young & enamored by this pattern of men who shouldn’t want me but would risk day to touch the stark chant of me. Each time, I imagined a witchcraft enveloping the bone. I remember,

once, at some low hour in the trough* of that summer — my mouth a voyaging boat, Tito’s spine a current of illicit knots, his hand a spindle on the back of my coarse head — he looks down at me, & moans out “Who the fuck are you?”

I say, and the answer is always the same thereafter: nobody, who are you?

*Okay, in any event, Elizabeth and I were in the pool, swimming and playing.

When she read with The Eagle and the Wren we introduced her as follows: A sequence titled “Google Search” places sequences of collocations—words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance—scattershot across the page, the clipped and fragmented form enacting the struggle between speech and silence that Camonghne Felix’s theme. Prose poems like “The Therapist Asks” and “Excerpt from Cutting with JB” provide a multilayered reading experience. Here, an apparently confessional style is complicated as the narrator’s adult self interacts with an younger speaker who is vulnerable and full of braggadocio: she seems to know her vulnerability, and is at the same time breezily unaware. This provides a tense reading experience, for these speakers are drawn to situations that verge on or cross over into abuse. Often, the speaker does not realize the danger she entered into until the narrative is taken up in adulthood. These are poems of strength and exposure, where the personal is political, delivered with urgency, verve and wit.

We’re proud that Camonghne can join us next Saturday (29th April at 7 p.m.) at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. If you missed my post about my motivations for organising the reading, you can read it here. The post has all the information you will need to donate to RAINN (or, go to the top of this post and click the link), and directions if you would like to come to the reading, which is at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop on Saturday, 29th April at 7 p.m. We hope to see you there.

As part of the lead up to this much-anticipated reading, I am posting a poem by one of the eight poets who is reading: by Paul Tran, a Vietnamese-American poet who is working on their first book. As per their website, “The manuscript examines intergenerational trauma, sexual violence, and U.S. empire after the Fall of Saigon in 1975.” Here, I am reposting “Testimony”, a horrific/beautiful poem that breaks the cultural silence that surrounds rape and sexual abuse, and makes space for others to speak. Here, you will notice the line “Only him. / Again // and again”. In this kind of extreme experience, the perpetrator attempts to fill the lense of being, trying to blot out the self of the victim. But poetry pushes back, and speaks. Although the poem describes that moment of victimhood, the poet moves past it, holding that kernel so as to better witness it for the liberation of others.

When I said his name,
when I shouted what he was
at the top of my lungs —

a desire
for something
he couldn’t keep —

he dragged me by my hair
across the devil’s wilderness.
My back whittled

and threadbare. I wished
my scalp and skull had split,
spilled the contents

of my brain like rind
in a garden of unearthly delights
so I could be dead —

stay dead — and not chase
the impulse to testify
pulsing in my blood.

Cause and effect.
He planted me on a grove
overlooking my village.

He pushed his sex inside
me. The sky hid
behind gathering clouds,

too disgusted to look.
Perhaps it’s a gift
only to feel my body

taken from me.
Perhaps observation’s a lie.
No one believed me

anyway. No one came.
Only him.
Again

and again,
until there was
nothing left.

(Originally published in The Offing, Trans Issue, 26th November, 2015.)

We’re proud to have Paul as part of the line up next Saturday (29th April at 7 p.m.) at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop. If you missed my previous post about my motivations for organising the reading, you can read it here. The post has all the information you will need to donate to RAINN (or go to the top of this post and click the link), and directions if you would like to come to the reading, which is at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop on Saturday, 29th April at 7 p.m. We hope to see you there.

Here is an extract from a poem by one of the exciting poets who is participating in our fundraiser for RAINN, the nonprofit / charity that advocates for survivors of sexual violence in the USA. Her name is Emily Brandt, and the poem in question (“Secret Garden”) was published in issue 12 of The Recluse which is the online journal of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery. (The Poetry Project has a long lineage in the New York Poetry scene. Distinguished, certainly, but I’m not sure if that’s the word in the experimental scene. According to Miles Champion, “The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery was founded in the summer of 1966 as a direct successor to, and continuation of, the various coffeehouse reading series that had flourished on the Lower East Side since 1960.”)

The extract is below, and you can read more of it here. If you missed my previous post about my motivations for organising the reading, you can read it here. The post has all the information you will need to donate to RAINN, and directions if you would like to come to the reading, which is at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop on Saturday, 29th April at 7 p.m. Anyway, here is the poem. And as Emily adroitly says, there is no other way to say it:

There’s no other way to say what’s next in this nonfictional mythology: A man rapes a woman.
A first draft reads: a man rapes a woman and nothing happens to him. Nothing! happens to him.
A revision reads: what happens to a man after he rapes a woman?
A revision replaces “rapes” with “sexually assaults.” A headline rewrites “has sex with.”
I know what happens to a woman. At least three hundred versions of I know.
It’s not hyperbole. I can share a hyperlink.

Dear Friends, here is a poem by one of the exciting poets who is participating in our fundraiser for the nonprofit RAINN, which advocates for survivors of sexual violence in the USA. Her name is Venessa Marco, and the poem in question is “Patriarchy”. Please watch her perform it here, in the article written about her in The Huffington Post. The poem gets at what is at the root of sexual violence affecting women, and we’re proud to have her as part of the line up next Saturday (29th April at 7 p.m.) at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop.

Venessa Marco at All DEF Poetry, Inkslam 2014

If you missed my previous post about my motivations for organising the reading, you can read it here. The post has all the information you will need to donate to RAINN, and directions if you would like to come to the reading, which is at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop on Saturday, 29th April at 7 p.m.

Venessa Marco is an Afro-descendent writer by way of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Marco has been featured on the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Upworthy and The Feminist Wire. She was allocated the Cora Craig Author Award for young women writers and her book is forthcoming in Penmanship Books. A feature on her here on www.vibe.com.

Here is a poem by one of the exciting poets who is participating in our fundraiser for the nonprofit RAINN, which advocates for survivors of sexual violence in the USA. His name is Thomas Dooley, and the poem in question (“Maybe in an Atlas”) is published in his fine collection Trespass, which was selected for the National Poetry Series in 2013. As PBS Newshour puts it in their Weekly Poem section, Thomas’ book “dramatizes family pain passed through generations”. Below is the poem, which you can find in Trespasshere. If you missed my previous post about my motivations for organizing the reading, you can read it here. The post has all the information you will need to donate to RAINN, and directions if you would like to come to the reading, which is at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop on Saturday, 29th April at 7 p.m. Use this link to PBS to listen to Thomas read the poem.

Thomas Dooley / www.thomasdooley.us

Maybe In An Atlas

Maybe another New Jersey
somewhere. Linden wood
as cash cow. And a way out. If my father grew
taller that year, sudden. Reached
the high altar wicks, a Moses
in Egypt. Bigger than the priests. What if deus
ex machina. Or a catcher.
No rye. Rye watered
down. Rocks to mean rocks. Not
glacial. Not a cold hand
anywhere. A siren sounds
on skin. Maybe a pie
in the window. Adults made big gestures
with giant hands. He wasn’t soft.
Boney, but not folded
like egg whites, hankies.
In his yearbook: “Aspiration: farmer.”
Tall as corn, as noon sun. Only if he grew
taller, sudden, he wouldn’t be
lightweight linden, maybe a hundred
proof. She was proof. Girls
were softer. Maybe his hand
looked giant. And she lay down
softly. Like he was made to, maybe.

Dear Friends, some of you are probably aware of that vein of my poetry that addresses the subject of sexual abuse, and associated themes produced by the struggle to “travel / up into “the speech range” (‘Witch’s Spindle’); the fight against erasure, and the way that society would, at times, prefer us to be silent, because our experiences are painful to listen to, and inconvenient. (Have a look at this essential essay by poet Cathy Linh Che about anti-erasure.) Because I have skin in the game, and because I want to help others, I have organised a poetry reading fundraiser for RAINN, a nationwide nonprofit based in the USA.

According to their website, “RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation’s largest anti-sexual violence organization. RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE, online.rainn.org y rainn.org/es) in partnership with more than 1,000 local sexual assault service providers across the country and operates the DoD Safe Helpline for the Department of Defense. RAINN also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help victims, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. RAINN has helped more than 2.4 million people since 1994.”

I myself was sexually abused by a priest at an elite Catholic boarding school in my native Ireland. After informing the school of the abuse in the autumn of 2005, the priest was quickly laicized by the Vatican (“defrocked”). (He then, I believe, was living in his native Belfast, and more recently, Dublin.) Ten years later, in 2015, I finally reported him to the police (in Ireland, only the victim can trigger the procedures that lead to police investigation: prior to this, their participation was on a “soft” basis). In 2016, the Director of Public Prosecution decided not to prosecute (or bring the case to trial) because although the grooming process had begun when I was 16, the actual physical sexual abuse began several weeks after my 17th birthday (I have evidence of this in contemporaneous diaries). The age of consent at the time was 17.

I mention this to show how difficult it is to bring a perpetrator to trial. So far, I’ve done what I can. And part of that is to organize a poetry reading here in New York City with some of the most talented and powerful poets I know. The eight poets who will read at Berl’s Poetry Bookshop in Brooklyn on Saturday 29th April write about sexual violence from a multiplicity of angles and points of view. Please come and listen to us, to support people who have been there, and continue to be there, in the fight against erasure. If you can’t make it, consider donating to RAINN, or if you prefer, to a local charity that supports survivors of sexual abuse and sexual violence.

Part of what poetry does is to go into those places that we dare not go alone. Poetry bears witness, which has always been one of its most important roles. We might dwell on the actual experience, because we need to tell the truth and, even create something beautiful in spite of it. But always the goal has been, to find a way out: as Sharon Olds has said in her poem “The Eye”, “and / somewhere in me too is the path / down to the creek gleaming in the dark, a / way out of there.”

Aziza Barnes is blk & alive. Born in Los Angeles, she currently lives in Oxford, Mississippi. You can find her work currently or forthcoming in PANK, pluck!, Muzzle, Callaloo, Union Station, Phantom Limb, The Rumpus, The Offing, and The Breakbeat Poets, among other journals and collections. Her first chapbook, me Aunt Jemima and the nailgun, was the first winner of the Exploding Pinecone Prize and published by Button Poetry. Her first full length collection of poems, I BE, BUT I AIN’T (2016), is the winner of the 2015 Pamet River Prize from YesYes Books.

Emily Brandt is the author of three poetry chapbooks. Emily is a co-founding editor of No, Dear and Web Acquisitions Editor for VIDA. For many years, she directed Take Back The News, an organization that confronted the under- and mis-representation of sexual assault by mainstream media.

Thomas Dooleyis the author of Trespass, a winner of the National Poetry Series. His poetry, collaborations, and interviews have appeared on NPR, Academy of American Poets,Poets & Writers,and “PBS NewsHour.” A practitioner of narrative medicine, Thomas works at the bedsides of hospitalized teens and has presented internationally on the subject of pediatric illness narratives. He is the Artistic Director of Emotive Fruition, a New York-based collective of poets and actors that works to change the way artists and audiences engage with live poetry. A member of the creative writing faculty at New York University, Thomas lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Camonghne Felix is a poet, political speechwriter and essayist. She is an MA Candidate in Arts Politics at NYU, a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the 2013 recipient of the Cora Craig Award for Young Women. You can find her work in various spaces, including Youtube, and in publications like Apogee, Union Station, and Poetry Magazine. She is also the author of the chapbook Yolk, published via Penmanship Books in March 2015 and in May of that year was listed by Black Youth Project as a “Black Girl From the Future You Should Know.”

Lizzie Harris’s debut collection, Stop Wanting (CSU Poetry Center, 2014), was selected by Tracy K. Smith and named one of Cosmo’s “10 Books by Women You Have to Read This Spring.” Her poems appear in All Hollow, Barrow Street, The Carolina Quarterly, Painted Bride Quarterly, Phantom Limb, Sixth Finch and VICE.com. She was born in southern Arizona, raised in Pennsylvania and currently resides in Brooklyn, where she’s a poetry editor for Bodega Magazine.

Venessa Marco is an Afro-descendent writer by way of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Marco has been featured on the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Upworthy and The Feminist Wire. She was allocated the Cora Craig Author Award for young women writers and her book is forthcoming in Penmanship Books.

David McLoghlin’s first book is Waiting for Saint Brendan and Other Poems (Salmon Poetry, 2012), a section of which was awarded second prize in Ireland’s Patrick Kavanagh Awards. Sign Tongue, his translations of Chilean poet Enrique Winter, won the 2015 Goodmorning Menagerie Chapbook-in-Translation prize. His second collection, Santiago Sketches is forthcoming from Salmon this year. David was a teaching Fellow at NYU, the Howard Nemerov Scholar at the 2011 Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Resident Writer at Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx. The middle section of Brendan, “Digesting a Scorpion,” addresses experiences of disassociation and silencing resulting from clerical sexual abuse—and exhorts us to “hold the line” in the fight against erasure. The manuscript for his third collection, Crash Centre, continues and extends that concern.

Paul Tran is a Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net-nominated poet. Their work appears in Prairie Schooner, MTV, RHINO, which gave them an Editor’s Award, & elsewhere. They received fellowships & residencies from Kundiman, VONA, Poets House, Lambda Literary, Napa Valley Writers Conference, Home School Miami, Vermont Studio Center, The Conversation, & Palm Beach Poetry Festival. They are the first Asian American in 19 years to represent the Nuyorican Poets Cafe at the National Poetry Slam & Individual World Poetry Slam, where they placed Top 10. Paul lives in Brooklyn, where they serve as Poetry Editor at The Offing and Poet In Residence at Urban Word NYC.